The Welfare of the City: Scenes from a Neighorhood

The second in an occasional series; the first:  Sister Margaret (or: the first time I walked away from poverty)

***

The snow has been relentless.  I missed the first wave, having been forced – entirely against my will, I’ll have you know -- to stay another day on my writing retreat in Manhattan because there were no trains home.  The kids and Julie had off Monday, which was a gift, and they went to school Tuesday, which was also a gift.  But they are off the rest of the week, which is, well, a mixed blessing.  If I could have one more day to get on top of the mess in the house, to get my head back in the game, that would be a good thing.  Instead I’m trying to catch some quiet moments alone where I can.  Which is why I’m going to be late to the neighborhood snow day potluck at Kate and Pete’s house.  The Brussels sprouts are my excuse – my, but they take a long time to roast, with just some olive oil and kosher salt.

When I arrive, the house is teeming.  I’m laden with the Brussels sprouts (roasted to perfection, if I do say so myself) and half the sticky buns I baked this morning with Micah and his pals Ada, age five, and Zady, age four.  Micah likes to measure and mix and roll things, but hates sticky fingers.  Ada and Zady, on the other hand, are girls after my own heart.  When it came to smearing soft butter on the rolled-out dough with their bare hands, they couldn’t get enough of it. 

“Ooohhh! It feels so good!” They giggled, pinching off more butter and finger-painting it on the rectangle of soft, sweet dough.  Micah sprinkled the cinnamon, I rolled it up, and everyone helped pinch the seam.  I cut thick slabs and arranged the pin-wheels in the slurry of sugar and butter the kids had just spread with a spatula all over the bottom of the baking pans.  The warm, sticky cinnamon swirl buns are… well, words fail.  Possibly too much.  I’m taking half of them to the potluck.

I take my food to Kate and Pete’s kitchen and put it on the counter.  My Ada Ruby, their oldest, greets me with a hug.  Jen and Tim arrive with a bottle of wine.  Julie has put good beer in the fridge, Long Trail I think.  Folks keep arriving, with salads, corn bread, chocolate cake.  There are brownies in the oven, and the whole house smells sweet and chocolaty.  The main course is sheer perfection:  tortilla soup with lime and cilantro, avocado and red onions to sprinkle on top.  There’s also black bean soup, but I can’t eat any, I’m already so full.  I can’t find a plate to put Brussels sprouts on, so I just pinch a few with my fingers, then lick the salt off.  Zady’s dad Zach sees me and smiles.  He leans in and whispers, “I did the same thing.”

“Marta, those are so good,” says Pete as I squeeze out of the kitchen.  “Brussel sprouts are much maligned and I just don’t understand why.  I love them.”

“Me too!”  There’s not much food I don’t love though.  Licorice is the only flavor I really can’t abide.  Everything else is about texture: oatmeal, tapioca, rice pudding – I can’t do it.  It’s a shame too, because I love the idea of all those foods.  I mean really, is there anything more cozy and comforting than a bowl of oatmeal with cream and brown sugar and raisins?  Too bad it makes me gag.

“Hey Aaliyah, can I have that baby?” Aaliyah is one of Trixie’s best friends and our next-door neighbor.  Trixie has known Aaliyah and her sister Qudsiyyah since they were all two and three year olds.  For several years I took care of them before and after school, and had baby Ada during the day.  “Marta’s daycare and taxi service,” the kids used to call it. 

Aaliyah smiles and hands me baby Levi, Kate and Pete’s third child.  Josiah, their two-year old middle son is showing us a few dance moves, much to everyone’s delight.

I settle on the couch and bounce the baby on my knee.  Jen is beside me, hugely pregnant and looking uncomfortable.  “How you doin’ babe?” I ask, and lay my hand on her belly.  Jen is not only one of my dearest friends, but also my yoga and pilates instructor, with a studio in her home that is directly across the street from us.  I take private sessions with her, and we’re bartering for childcare.  It’s only recently starting to feel real that this isn’t just a plan, but a relationship.  A new baby in my life!  Suddenly I am so eager to have this baby on the outside.  Not as eager as Jen is, though.

“I’m okay.  I’m kind of sad, actually, but it feels pretty hormonal, not existential, you know?”  I stroke her knee absently, assure her I do indeed know exactly what she means. 

“I don’t think I’m going to stay for the movie,” she says. 

I shake my head and whisper, “Me either.”  I look round at this house full of people I love, every one of them a neighbor on my little block of rowhouses, most of whom I’ve known for years and years.  Jen (the other Jen, Zady’s mom) and Q & A’s mom Kelley are hanging a sheet on the wall; Emilia has just arrived with an LCD projector.  Movie night on the Terrace.  This is a good life.  My gratitude is deep.  Still, I know my limits.  “I’m going to leave when the movie starts, enjoy a little solitude before I put the kids to bed.”

I turn to listen to Michelle, on the other side of me on the couch.  She’s talking about food.  “We had a lunch meeting at work, and I’ve been trying to recreate this green been dish ever since.  With cranberries and pearl onions.  Oh my, it was so good.  I can’t quite get it right though – I think I’m putting in too much olive oil.”

“Shelley, how many years have I known you? Seventeen? And I didn’t know you like to cook.”

“Has it been that long? Really?  You know, you mentioned recently about knowing my father, and I didn’t realize you’d been on the block that long until you said that.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember your father.  We moved here in 1992.  I was just trying to remember how old your Erich was then?  Maybe eight or nine?”

“Yeah, that’s about right.  He’s grown now.”  She sighs.  “But food, yeah, I love food.  I love everything about food.  You know, some people say they like to eat, but don’t really like all the preparation – all that chopping and cooking, you know?  But I just love it all.”

I smile, nodding.  I remember last summer, when there was a huge block party to celebrate because Shelley had completed her degree.  I do remember now eating some amazing barbeque pork on her stoop that day.  That was when we talked about her father.  How he went to Tuskegee.  How proud he was – never bought anything on credit.  Walked to the car dealership on the Avenue, paid cash, drove home with a new car, no note.  Her parents were good people.  Shelley is too.  And I don’t doubt she can cook, because that barbeque was amazing.  It’s all coming back to me.

“I was talking about this once with a girlfriend at work,” says Shelley, nodding her head in a sort of circular motion. “I said, ‘I love everything about food.  I love the way it looks, I love the way it tastes, I love the way it feels and smells….’  And my girlfriend, she looked at me and she said, ‘Shelley? Are you talkin about food or are you talkin about sex?!’”

I touch her arm, laughing.  “Shelley, good food and good sex?  Just two sides of the same coin, if you ask me.”

“You got that right!” She’s still chuckling and nodding her head.  “You sure do got that right.”

Confessions of a Hopeless Geek

This morning my mother-in-law expressed concern that I would go hungry if I did not accompany the family to the Amish restaurant for lunch, but I assured her I would find food if I grew faint while spending the day writing in the Wooster Public Library. My mother-in-law gets anxious if she thinks someone isn’t being well-fed, and we are all the happier (if a bit plumper) for her exquisitely successful means of coping with her anxiety. Today she put her anxiety to rest by directing me to an American-style diner and a Greek pizza place, both directly across the street from the library.

I have just returned from the American-style diner, where I had two eggs over easy, hash browns, bacon, wheat toast and coffee at two o’clock in the afternoon, for five dollars ($7.50, including the fifty percent tip I left for the very lovely waitress who brought my food before I’d even stirred the cream and sugar into my coffee). While I ate, I read Julie and Julia, which I can’t decide if I like, but I most definitely love in that I’m-on-vacation-and-I-just-dripped-egg-yolks-on-my-book-because-I-don’t-want-to-put-it-down-even-for-food sort of way. (Book review to follow shortly, in which I promise to offer a more nuanced opinion.)

And now I’m back at my spot by the sky-filled cathedral windows in the library. In addition to lunch, I have taken a few breaks from writing the latest installment in my Welfare of the City series, in order to flirt on-line with a couple of men I’m particularly fond of (both pastors no less! One gay, one happily married – “non starters” as Julie likes to say about the hopeless innocence of my flirting). And here is my geeky confession: Is it possible that a day could be any better than this? With only the very fewest of exceptions, I’m pretty sure the answer is “No.” Shameless geek, that’s me.

But I do want to leave you with a passage from Julie and Julia just to spice things up a little. If you are a regular reader of mine, you may recall that to my mind, food and sex are really just two sides of the same coin. If you are a regular reader of mine, you may also recall that I love to write about sex, but in the interests of my very private wife, not to mention her father-who-reads-my-blog, I will only ever write about sex in mostly abstract ways which offer very, very little in the way of detail about my own actual sex life. Here I offer just the tiniest deviation from that rule, in an effort to allay any concerns the following excerpt might create; that deviation being an assurance that I am not, in fact, a practitioner of polyamory (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), but, in point of fact, I am quite the boring, geeky, middle-aged, blissfully married lady. Such assurances, however, are prelude to a further confession, which is that blissful monogamy notwithstanding, I find erotic energy in all sorts of experiences and relationships. My friend Gordon, founder of my book review group, recently reviewed a book by George Steiner called The Lessons of the Masters. In his review Gordon wrote, “The essence of the master-disciple relationship, according to GS, is loving trust, in which the entire soul of the student is opened to new knowledge. The mode of exchange is always speech (never writing), and it is somewhat erotic, though usually not actively so.” I replied to Gordon’s review with such enthusiastic virtual head-nodding that it occurred to me after impulsively hitting “send” that perhaps I had not been entirely demure and lady-like, as befits a middle-aged married lady such as myself. So be it. This middle-aged married lady loves her teachers, and totally gets what George Steiner was talking about. This middle-aged married lady also loves to feed people, and totally gets what Julie Powell is talking about in this passage from Julie and Julia (pp. 216-17 in the hardcover edition):

"Somewhere along the way, I discovered that in the physical act of cooking, especially something complex or plain old hard to handle, dwelled unsuspected reservoirs of arousal both gastronomic and sexual. If you are not one of us, the culinarily depraved, there is no way to explain what’s so darkly enticing about eviscerating beef marrowbones, chopping up lobster, baking a three-layer pecan cake, and doing it for someone else, offering someone hard-won gustatory delights in order to win pleasures of anther sort. Everyone knows there are foods that are sexy to eat. What they don’t talk about so much is foods that are sexy to make. But I’ll take a wrestling bout with recalcitrant brioche dough over being fed a perfect strawberry any day, foreplay-wise."

Indeed.

A Purpose Driven Sonnet

The Rev’rend Doctor Warren, seems to me

would like to have his cake and eat it too

regarding homosexuality.

Alas, his fork-ed tongue is nothing new.

“Let me be clear what God’s own Word intends:

that sex outside of marriage is a sin.”

And marriage as a union he defends:

no other than a man and woman, kin.

But killing gays perhaps does go astray;

let’s not forget what Jesus did command:

that dignity for all be his new Way,

upon that rock the church must take a stand.

Um, Rick? My sexuality is ME.

Shut UP already ‘bout my dignity.

‘mkay?

edited to add: This is my second submission to Shannon's InSoWriMo (International Sonnet Writing Month) challenge.

You Must Not Know 'Bout Me (if you thought i was done talking about sex)

To the left, to the left, to the left….

I guess that’s where you could say I come down on the spectrum of Christians who think about sex. And these days, sadly, many Christians are positively obsessed with sex. Indeed, many Christians these days have made their sexual obsession – especially their obsession with homosexuality – almost a fetish, a fetish that has lost sight entirely of the good news of Jesus Christ.

That good news is that people matter -- not abstractions, but real, live people, and their lovely, messy, complicated relationships and their yearning, passionate desire to know and share the love of God. Classes and categories don’t matter – Jew or Samaritan is irrelevant, man or woman, sick or well, rich or poor, prostitute or wife, tax collector … centurion … servant…. thief.… Everyone matters. Everyone can be in relationship. Everyone can love everyone else as a blessed child of God. In the same way, rigid rules – about what you can or can’t eat, about whom you may or may not touch, about how and when and where to worship God -- just dissolve if they don’t foster dignity, love and relationship, among people and with God. A formal system of purity is set aside in favor of a more intentional purity that asks, “Is this good for people? Does this free people to love one another and God more closely? Does this require that people be intentional about the way their lives and actions affect the human dignity of others?”

It seems to me that if these are the questions that matter to Jesus (and I think they are), then much of Christianity’s current obsession with sex is nothing short of blasphemy. It seems to me that when Christian fundamentalists – whether they purport to be “progressive” or not – build an alter in front of a few passages of scripture, such as the first chapter of Romans, but turn a blind eye and cold heart to the blessed and beautiful desires and relationships and yearning of millions of actual human beings – well, it seems to me that is idolatry piled on top of blasphemy.

The blasphemy of much of Christian thinking about sex is that it starts with a set of formal purity rules of exactly the sort Jesus came to free us from. The Christian Right spews hate and damnation, “progressive” evangelicals kill us bit more softly, but even the liberal church does not really offer a paradigm shift, but merely a “kinder, gentler” set of purity rules.

These rules and how they shift, depending on where you sit on the spectrum from conservative to liberal Christian, remind me of a moralistic game of sexual Clue: definitely everyone is down with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, with candles (and maybe even sex toys?), in the bedroom; and maybe some of us can handle Mr. and Mr. White, also with candles (but please don’t tell us about the sex toys), in the bedroom; and possibly Mr. Brown and Miss Jones (though it’s probably better if they are someone else’s kids), but only with birth control, and only in the bedroom they share only with each other; and most definitely not Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones, with anything at all, anywhere; and obviously not Mr. White and Mr. Jones, even if they use a condom, at the rest stop; and ditto Miss Jones and Mr. Black, with alcohol, at a party where they’ve just hooked up.

Right? Isn’t that how it goes? We start with a formal set of rules – they might be about “the sanctity of marriage,” or they might be about “loving and committed relationships,” but always formal rules about relationships in the abstract – and then we plug in real people, without much thought to their actual relationships with other real people, and rarely with any thought at all about their actual desires or, horror of horror, their physical pleasure. Real relationships and real pleasure always seem subservient, at best, or even irrelevant, to these formal rules about sex.

What if, instead, we started with real relationships and real pleasure and built a sexual ethic from there? I’m no Biblical scholar, but I’m having a difficult time understanding why that would not be pleasing to God.

How would such a sexual ethic change the way we think about sex? Well, first of all, it might problematize a lot of sex that no one ever questions under the current set of formal rules. Isn’t it funny how no one ever worries much about the ethics of sex within a heterosexual marriage? Oh, we hear all the time about the problems (that’s what Viagra’s for, right?) and the wonders (the Obamas are making marriage sexy again!) of such sex, but what about the ethics? So for example, what if Mr. and Mrs. Smith have an emotionally abusive relationship that extends to their bedroom? Is that ethical? Or what if Mrs. Smith has never experienced pleasure in her sexual relationship with Mr. Smith, and he doesn’t really care? Is that ethical?

On the other hand, what if Mr. Smith and Miss Jones really enjoy sex with each other, but they’re not at all romantically attached to one another? What if they’ve taken care to communicate to one another that neither of them is interested in a love match, but that they are both very interested in exploring sexual pleasure as a natural extension of an intimate friendship? Could that be ethical?

And what if Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones are married to other people, and for various reasons that aren’t all that difficult to imagine, all four adults have decided that a sexual relationship between Mr. Smith and Mrs. Jones is worth exploring, and everyone is being a grown-up and communicating, and it’s all pretty emotionally healthy? In a universe where relationship and pleasure are the foundation of sexual ethics, couldn’t that be ethical? It seems to me that such a scenario is inherently complicated – but in my ethics, at least, it is complicated because there are so many relationships to attend to, not because there are some formal rules that require certain behavior within the institution of marriage, everyone’s real relationships and pleasure be damned.

And what about Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones at the rest stop? Or what about Miss Jones and Mr. Black’s drunken hook-up at a party? It seems to me that these are the most ethically problematic. As with any form of conspicuous consumption, these sexual encounters are ethically problematic because they lack any sort of meaningful relationship outside of possibly healthy pleasure, and even healthy pleasure can’t be very meaningfully tended to when two people know nothing at all about one another, and even less so when judgment is impaired. It is difficult for me to affirm these encounters as ethical, but only because they do not seem to me to be intentionally concerned with healthy relationships or pleasure. Moreover, I should note, that much of our culture’s conspicuous consumption is unethical by exactly the same standard and every bit as sinful in my eyes.

A sexual ethic that begins with relationship and pleasure … does this seem complicated? But of course! Being a human being in relationship is complicated. Treating people as though they matter is complicated. Add sex to that mix, and it gets very very complicated, most certainly. A sexual ethic that begins with relationship and pleasure is NOT simply “anything goes” – indeed, it is quite the opposite. It is an ethic that requires intentional and careful tending to real relationships and pleasure, which is never easy, especially when passion is involved. It is not an ethic that promises to solve all the problems that inevitably will arise in sexual relationships. People will still get hurt, and relationships will still end, and even people acting with the most ethical intention they can bring to their sexual relationships will make a big old mess of things. Ethics doesn’t solve the dilemma of being human.

But all the pain and sorrow and alienation and shame that so many people feel about themselves as sexual beings, and all the violence and persecution and hatred that has been visited on so many for so long, all because of the rigid and merciless purity codes that so much of Christianity is obsessed by? None of that is intrinsic to being human. None of that is necessary. It is not good news, and it is not pleasing to God.

Christianity’s obsession with sex, and in particular homoerotic sex, is tearing apart the Body of Christ limb from limb. I would go so far as to say that this obsession is crucifying Christ all over again. May God have mercy on us all.

let's talk (some more) about sex, baby!

I have a friend with whom I have frequent conversations about sex. This friend was recently describing folks he knows who are quite sexually promiscuous, and while my friend is not so interested in that sort of a sex life, he suspects God doesn’t really care all that much either. This prompted an email conversation about sexual ethics, and here’s what I wrote (in the all-lower-case type I often use in casual emails):

here's the sum total of my sexual ethics (and, i like to think, god's):

do whatever feels good, but do it with intention and care so as not to harm yourself or others. i'm suspicious of a lot of promiscuous sexual activity such as what you describe, but only because i think often folks are trying to feed themselves in unhealthy ways, without being careful of the emotional/psychological/spiritual lives of themselves and their partners -- but i don't view it as any more of a sin than any sort of mindless and careless consumption.

i also think anonymous sex is pretty problematic, because if you know nothing about your partner, by definition you can't be intentional about not doing them harm. what if this anonymous encounter is actually an act of self-hatred? i'd kinda like to know about that before i get sexually intimate with someone....

lots of folks say their needs are being met by all sorts of unhealthy stuff, so self-reporting that needs are being met is not so persuasive to me. having said that, i'm equally sure that i'm in no position to judge or to know whether someone's needs are actually being met. i'm just suspicious when someone tells me that, say, shopping or mcdonalds is good for their emotional and spiritual lives; likewise i'm a little suspicious of multiple, secret sex partners.

but i think pointing fingers and lecturing, even if you're pretty sure you're right, gets you almost nowhere. and often folks are doing the best they can with the resources they have, and taking care of themselves in the small ways they can -- and a god who loves them (and our god does) understands that. sexual promiscuity is not an unhealthy way that i feed myself, but there are plenty of others, and i'm just really grateful that there is love and salvation and forgiveness and LOVE at the end of the day and the beginning of the next one.

* * *

As they say in my kids’ school, I’m ready for questions and comments.

let's talk about sex, baby!

i beg your pardon.

i never promised you a

rose-style post on sex.

a haiku or two

will have to do. oh poor you!

but here’s a sneak peek:

my ethics of sex?

have sex like people matter.

questions anyone?